There were too many distractions before I left home. I was distracted with a list of “things to do”, a Birthday, Mother’s Day, that last minute doctor’s appointment and everything in between, and I was not concentrating on my hotel reservation – consequently, in the mishmash I did not read my emails properly and had a rough landing, with a mix up of my reservation – this particular hotel group has three apartment hotels situated close together and there was not one bed available that night !! The next night, “yes”, but not “tonight” and I had just arrived from a long flight. Fortunately, the Apartment Hotel I had stayed in on the last visit had one last suite available and a taxi was called. As I have written previously, traveling by taxi in the Latin countries can be highly entertaining – white knuckling, but entertaining. This is a large city with too much traffic and I wonder sometimes, when not caught in a traffic jam if they use jet fuel because of the speed of the cars and motorcycles.
Getting into the taxi, exhausted, with too much luggage, I noticed a small TV screen attached to the front of the dashboard, showing a telenovella (Spanish language soap opera). My seat of choice in the taxi is in the front, next to the driver, like ringside seats at a sports match, never wanting to miss one detail. No sooner had we become “airborne” than did he begin to ask the inevitable questions: “where are you from, how do you like it, how long will you stay” (I was ready to go home) and on and on while he connived to watch the drama unfolding on theTV screen. Within a few minutes, we were in the right hand lane , turning left across the traffic, onto The Golden Mile – which he succeeded in doing, accompanied by screeching brakes on all sides. Not enough going on, at this point, he took out his cell phone to check his messages and make a call ………that is what I call multitasking to the max !